Thursday, March 26, 2009

I suppose pets could be considered a hobby, hence the reason I'm posting the intro to ours in here, though we actually love our little guys. A little background: I never thought I'd want a snake until we moved into the place we're living now. One of our roommates had a ball python and was taking care of two others for a friend. Intrigued, I asked if i could hold him one day and it was all over from there. I loved him and knew I wanted one.

We did some research on several different snakes. While I liked the python, I've always liked boas. Here in Manhattan, we have a herp store called Scaly Dave's Herp Shack, so we headed down one Sunday to look around. With help from Jon's brother (don't worry, Ryan, we'll get that squared with you!) we brought home this guy:

We originally named his Esteban, but that was around the time I was on a "Nacho Libre" kick, so I started calling him Chancho and it stuck. He's the sweetest, mellowest little guy and is content being held. In fact, most days he doesn't want to go back in his cage.

Our next additions were two rainbow boas who we named Circe and Gorby. Unfortunately, Gorby had some health issues and died about a month ago. Though it seemed like an impulse buy when we got them, we knew we were going to get a new snake and had researched beforehand. Circe is huge and somewhat of the queen. She's actually seems to favor Jon, which is just as well because she's a cow and he has a easier time handling her most days.

Number three was a California King Snake someone had listed on Craigslist. She was slightly impulse, though we did check into it to make sure we had the right conditions and could take care of her with our current situation. These snakes are pretty hearty and so we added her to our family and named her Domino. While she's completely adorable and sweet when she wants to be, she has got out of her cage once and she's bit me once. So yeah, she's feisty, but we love her.

And finally, our most recent baby, another Craigslist find, this one a young ball python who Jon named Rorshach. He's still a bit skittish at first handling, but he mellows out really quickly and loves to curl up against body heat. You can see that he's still got some shed on him, and while we don't normally handle our snakes during their shed, we gave him a little snake oil to help him with that last little bit.

This is our little herp family. Most of my human family thinks I've lost my mind, but these guys are great pets if you're willing to take on the commitment and take care of them the way they need to be.